There is no athlete -- hell, there are very few people -- that I admire more at the moment than Bogdana Matsotska, the Ukrainian skier who has dropped out of the Putiniad, rather than continue to pretend that she lives in the happy fun bubble we see on TV.

"I am in Maidan but just with my soul," she said. The two-time Olympian explained her frustration with Ukraine President Viktor Yanukovych in an interview conducted in English and Russian. "I think as a minimum he has to be jailed, and for a long time," Matsotska said. "For all the lives that he took, for all the lives of innocent people that came peacefully to stand for their opinion. "I hope that I will be heard by the world and that probably somebody will step in and will help," she said. Matsotska is remaining with Oleg Matsotskyy, her father and coach, in the athletes village in the mountains above Sochi. "We made this decision together. It is really hard for a sportsman and coach," she said. "The people are dying and my friends and family are there and I cannot race after all this in Ukraine going on."

Within the happy fun bubble, however, there is to be no indication that people are dying in the streets of a European nation in a conflict that seems to essentially come down to a question of whether the Ukraine will pledge its economic troth to German bankers or Russian kleptocrats. For this, people are dying, and some Ukrainian athletes wanted to mark the occasion but, of course, no.

The situation in Kiev has lingered over the Ukrainians' participation in Sochi from the beginning of the Games. The Ukrainian Olympic Committee petitioned Olympic officials for permission to give their athletes black armbands to wear during competition, as a way to honor those who were killed during the violence. That request was rejected, as Olympic rules are strict when it comes to the uniformity of equipment and apparel.

Hell, the armbands might obscure a logo, and we certainly can't be having that. It's not as though sports ever have been far from this; one of the opposition leaders is former world heavyweight champion Vitaly Klitschko.

Meanwhile, a fragile truce has come apart, Kiev is in flames again, and it looks like we are not far from the moment in which nobody is really in control of anything anywhere.

Though armed militants on the barricades tend to be from the far-right fringe, the opposition has broad support. But many Ukrainians also fear violence slipping out of control: "This is brother fighting brother," said Irina, a local woman walking to Independence Square to donate syringes for blood transfusions. "We need to realise we're all one people." In a sign of faltering support for Yanukovich, his hand-picked head of Kiev's city administration quit the ruling party in protest at bloodshed in the streets...In Lviv, a bastion of Ukrainian nationalism since Soviet times, the regional assembly declared autonomy from Yanukovich and his administration, which many west Ukrainians see as much closer to Moscow and to Ukraine's Russian-speaking east. Ukraine's hryvnia currency, flirting with its lowest levels since the global financial crisis five years ago, weakened again on Thursday. Ukraine's state debt insurance costs rose to their highest since December 2009. Possibly from fear of sanctions, some of Ukraine's richest magnates have stepped up pressure on Yanukovich to hold back on using force: "There are no circumstances which justify the use of force toward the peaceful population," said "oligarch" Rinat Akhmetov, who bankrolled Yanukovich's 2010 election campaign.

The "far right fringe" is undoubtedly part of the opposition, -- to the point where it is starting to worry the genuine reformers in the movement -- which makes the whole thing just a little dicey for the administration, which seems bound and determined to maintain a measured distance while trying to help broker a European solution while resolutely insisting that this not be seen as a major struggle in Cold War 2.0. Which is why Matsotska's gesture rings so profoundly. There is politics to it, for sure, but there is simply humanity as well, and that's in short supply, outside the happy fun bubble.